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Delighted Halfling card art
Live Play Data

Delighted Halfling

{G} · Creature — Halfling Citizen · The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR)
11%
Live Inclusion
Times Brought
723
Decks Running
349
Median Cast Turn
3.0
Drawn → Played
79%
Format

11% of tracked Commander decks run Delighted Halfling, and when players draw it, 79% of copies reach the battlefield. Median first cast lands on turn 3.0.

Delighted Halfling earns a slot in 11% of the 3256 distinct Commander decks tracked on Playgroup Live, and drawn copies reach the battlefield 79% of the time. That draw-to-play rate is one of the higher figures we observe for a one-mana creature, consistent with players prioritizing it in their opening hand and casting it the moment it arrives.

The card's two tap abilities explain that urgency. It produces colorless mana freely, and it produces any color specifically for legendary spells while granting those spells the ability to dodge counterspells. In a format built around a legendary commander, that uncounterability text is often worth more than the mana itself. The result is a card that functions partly as a Birds of Paradise variant and partly as a Veil of Summer stapled to a creature.

The commander spread is broad. The Ur-Dragon leads the deck count at the top, but Delighted Halfling shows up across mono-green builds, five-color piles, and everything in between. It fits any green deck whose commander is worth protecting from interaction.

At a glance
  • 11% of tracked Commander decks include Delighted Halfling
  • 79% of drawn copies are cast before the game ends
  • T3.0 median first-cast turn
  • 60% battlefield stickiness once cast
  • 278 distinct players have brought this card to a tracked game
  • 40% win rate in participations where this card resolved

First-cast turn

n=160
30%
T1
13%
T2
9%
T3
9%
T4
13%
T5
26%
T6-9
1%
T10+
Median 3.0 P25 1 · P75 6 · max 13
On curve 30% (48 / 160 cast on T1) Cast same turn as drawn 75%

The "good card" funnel

724 brought · 278 players
Brought to game
724
Ever drawn
202
Reached battlefield
160
Still on board at game end
96
79%

Of 724 Delighted Halflings brought to games, 202 were drawn, 160 of those were cast, and 60% of cast copies remained on the battlefield through the end of the game.

≥ +3.7pp

Players who cast this card win 40% of the time (n=157) , vs 29% when it never left the library (n=484).

When players drew this card but left it in hand, they won 40% (n=42) — about the same as leaving it in the library. Those players survived long enough to draw it, so the gap above is about the card resolving, not just about surviving.

Observed gap +11.5pp; 95% confidence interval +3.7pp to +19.3pp. Correlational, not causal: powerful payoffs also get cast more often in games you are already winning.

Final zone distribution

221 instances
2.3%
Library
43.4%
Battlefield
30.3%
Graveyard
8.6%
Exile

Most observed instances of Delighted Halfling finish on the battlefield or in the graveyard after combat. The card is a creature that gets attacked, blocked, and sacrificed rather than one that sits quietly in the library untouched.

Commanders that played this card

in tracked games

The Ur-Dragon leads with 14 decks, but the list stretches across mono-green, two-color, and five-color commanders. Delighted Halfling is not a tribal card. It is a legendary-matters card that fits anywhere green can run it.

Frequently Asked

How often is Delighted Halfling drawn in a Commander game?
Across 633 tracked games where Delighted Halfling was in the deck, it was drawn 28% of the time. That is consistent with typical singleton draw variance in a 100-card deck. Of 202 instances that reached a player's hand, 79% were cast before the game ended.
What turn does Delighted Halfling usually get cast?
Median first cast is turn 3.0. The distribution skews early: the mode is turn 1, meaning the single most common cast turn is the very first turn of the game. From there, casts spread across turns 2 through 6, with a tail extending into the late game. Players who find it in their opening hand cast it immediately at a 75% same-turn rate.
Does casting Delighted Halfling actually help you win?
In participations where Delighted Halfling reached the battlefield, the win rate is 40%. In participations where it stayed in the library, the win rate is 29%. The gap is +11.5 percentage points. The sample has enough observations to treat this as a directional signal rather than noise, though it reflects deck quality as much as the card itself. Decks that run and successfully cast a one-mana ramp creature tend to be well-constructed to begin with.
Is Delighted Halfling legal in Commander?
Yes. Delighted Halfling from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth is fully legal in Commander, as well as Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Historic, Timeless, Duel Commander, and several other formats. It is not legal in Pioneer, Standard, Pauper, or Pauper Commander.
Which commanders run Delighted Halfling most often?
The Ur-Dragon leads the tracked dataset, followed by Witherbloom, the Balancer and Jodah, the Unifier. That spread tells an important story: five-color legendary-heavy decks value the uncounterability clause most, but the card also appears in two-color and mono-green builds where the colorless mana ability and body still justify the slot. No single commander dominates the distribution.
How concentrated is the Delighted Halfling data across players?
278 distinct players have brought Delighted Halfling to a tracked game on Playgroup Live. The single heaviest contributor accounts for 5% of all tracked instances. That is well below the threshold where one player's results would skew the aggregate, so the data reflects a genuinely broad sample of how the card performs across the community.